


Where the Frightened Crawl

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Lazy Sex, M/M, Nightmares, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-24
Updated: 2006-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:32:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He doesn't know what happened to Sam. He thinks he's looking for him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Frightened Crawl

**Author's Note:**

> _"There's a crystal view from my window  
>  And I can see years to come  
> I live for the burn and the sting of pleasure  
> I live for the sword, the steel, and the gun  
> I can tear down the walls, storm them barricades  
> Run to the place where the frightened crawl  
> Desire lurks beyond good and evil  
> So dance on the graves where the hammer falls  
> "Wasteland" by The Mission UK_

I.

He's tired. It feels like he's been tired for days, but he doesn't know. Not for sure. Time feels elastic to him, but not springy and resilient as elastic should be; this is more like the waistband of a really old pair of boxers, broken and stretched, sagging out of shape and falling at inopportune moments, nearly worn through.

He finds himself afraid that he'll move the wrong way and it will all rip open with an exhausted sigh, disgorging whatever horrors lie in the darkness beyond. He thinks maybe he's too tired to be rational about this. He thinks maybe there's no rationality left in the world.

He can't remember much; it's only pieces, feelings. A feeling of time gone by, flown on rotting wings; a feeling of sadness, hopelessness, equally faded. The agony of being alone.

He doesn't know what happened to Sam. He thinks he's looking for him.

He doesn't know if Sam was taken or whether he left Dean again, disgusted and afraid.

The light—what light there is, because mostly he walks in a strange and shadowless twilight—does strange things when it touches his skin. It digs through him, rooting and greedy, with no regard for what it brings to the surface.

Trembling, Dean holds out his hand and hopes this time something helpful will come.

_(Flash.)_

_"Please Dean, please…" Sam moans, so deep that it rumbles through both of them like an earthquake. He pushes back sharply, unexpectedly and Dean can't breathe as Sam's body opens to take him deeper, enclose him tighter. Sam curses and drags at Dean's hand, almost tumbling them both, to wrap Dean's fingers around his blood-heavy cock, curving into Dean's hand hotly and shaking a little at the contact. "Do it," Sam says urgently. "Can't…ah…can't come 'less you're touching me…"_

Dean jerks out of the sun beam— _is it really the sun? Can this be called 'sunlight' anymore?_ —with something that borders on a scream, his flesh tensing in need and remembered lust and a sorrow that bleeds him out all along the dusty chicken-scratched ground.

Not helpful. Not nearly helpful.

He is thirsty. Dimly, as if it's no longer important, he's hungry too.

There is no food. There is no water.

His guns have crumbled away into dust and rust, smudging his hands like blood.

There is only this dusty ghost-town and the rattle of the laden wind, tasting of ozone and smoke and death and him, the empty wanderer.

 

II.

It is a city this time, big and hopelessly vast. So big to be looking for just one small person.

Or even a not so small one.

He is hurt this time, his hand inexpertly wrapped in a rag that's gone gray and rusty, blood and dirt. His body aches. He can feel other, small wounds as though tiny vicious teeth have been biting him, but he doesn't look.

They're not Sam's teeth, leaving their marks in his skin and beyond that, nothing matters.

Sam is gone.

He has to find Sam again, to say…

_(I love you I need you I'm sorry don't go come back I want you please please please)_

…something. He'll say something. Anything.

He's in what must have been their downtown; little if any light makes its way to the bottom of these canyons of steel and crumbling stone. He's not sorry, though he knows eventually he will have to step into the light again, make himself remember.

He wants very much to remember…if he wasn't so afraid of what he'll find.

He's started to find bones now, sometimes whole skeletons, drifted in gritty white dust, bony fingers outstretched as if in supplication. They're not Sam's. He doesn't know if he truly knows that or if he's just wishing it's true, but it feels true.

"Sam! _Sam!_ " He knows that things may come out of the dark for him at the sound of his voice, a human voice, but he also knows he can't find Sam in all of this, not alone. The risk is worth the danger.

_(Flash.)_

_"I can't do this anymore, Dean."_

_"W...what do you mean?" He reaches for Sam and Sam dances away from him, refusing to meet his eyes._

_"This. You. Us." With Dean's come a streak of shine on the back of his thigh, Sam jerks on his jeans._

_And Dean can't pretend to not understand. Not when it's all breaking apart like this, sudden and out of the blue. "No. No, wait…" He stumbles out of the bed, tangled in the sheet, and falls to his hands and knees, graceless. "Sam._ Sam. _"_

_Sam shakes his head. "No. I can't, Dean. You…"_

_Dean scrambles up, bleeding, bleeding. "Don't," he says, frantic. "Don't. Don't. Please." He has no pride. Not with this. Not about this. "Please, Sam…don't."_

_Sam's face comes up finally, so Dean can see him. He sees sorrow, he sees regret._

_He doesn't see reprieve._

_Sam comes to him, takes Dean's face in his hands. His mouth is warm, still wet with the taste of them, still sweet with it. Dean closes his eyes…_

…and jerks away, before he can remember any more. Dean drops like he's been brained, throat choked and clogged and his knees are cut open by rocks and glass and fragments of bone. It hardly hurts.

For a moment he can only kneel, gasping, filled to the limit with this pain, like losing Sam all over again. Then he staggers roughly to his feet and—clinging to the wall like it's his last hope of Heaven—drags himself onward until he can walk without help.

"Sam!" he shouts endlessly, hopelessly. " _Sam!_ "

 

III.

He tries to sleep. He can't remember the last time he slept. He can't sleep now. He thinks it might be the lack of true night. Or maybe just the lack of someone—of Sam—watching his back.

He still doesn't know how long it's been.

He still hasn't found Sam.

He's fortified the barn as best he could with what was at hand. The creatures pound and howl at the doors and walls, demanding entrance, demanding blood. He lies in the loft, staring at the rafters. Someone took the time to carve shapes into the wood, fantastical beasts and lurid swirls. They're painted too, bright cobalts and blood reds, yellows like true sunlight, and spring grass green, gilt and silver and bronze.

The roof tiles have shrunk and cracked; what passes for light trickles through the breaks like little spears.

In his right hand he holds the rusted blade end of a machete. He found it in one of the stalls buried in uneaten and moldering feed and whetted the blade until the edge gleamed sharp and clean again. His left he brings out sideways, edging over worn and dusty wood until the light pierces through the center of his palm and…

_(Flash.)_

_"Why?" Dean asks, as if the words are pushed out of him with Sam's every thrust inside. "Just…why?"_

_He wants to curl in on himself, he wants to pull away but he can't make himself do it. Not when this is the end. Not when this is all there will ever be._

_"Because you're my brother and this…" Sam says. His hand slides up the inside of Dean's thigh, reaches to cup his balls, stroke between them and where his cock slips in and out of Dean's body. "…this isn't the relationship I want to have with my brother. This isn't a life I can keep living. We have to stop, Dean. We have to stop."_

_He doesn't stop though, breath coming faster and mixed with his moans. His arm is tight across Dean's chest and his nails draw blood as Dean wrenches away._

_"You don't get to do this, Sam," Dean says and this time he's the one pulling on his clothes, slick and open with lube and pre-come. It aches. He aches. "You don't get to salve your conscience."_

_Sam gapes at him._

_"Do what you want," Dean says, tossing his bag over his shoulder, gathering up his guns. "You always do anyway."_

Wood splinters, startling him. The yowls of the creatures grow louder, wilder, triumphant.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he whispers and contemplates the machete again.

 

IV.

"Dean. _Dean._ " Sam's voice is urgent, tugging him like a rope. Or maybe a leash, since he never seems to have any choice but to follow.

It's dark—true darkness—and his skin is freezing except where Sam's touching him. "Sam?" His mouth feels like it's been filled with dust.

"It's okay," Sam says. His hand is moving in Dean's hair. "It was a dream, okay? You were just dreaming."

He doesn't understand. Dreaming? "Sam?" he says again.

"It was a dream," Sam says again. His fingers slide across Dean's belly, his chest, and Dean doesn't know what to believe. Sam is gone. Sam doesn't want him and Sam is gone and he's all alone. He's been alone forever.

Except now maybe he isn't.

"Sam," he says again, differently and if it didn't feel like it had been _years_ since he last had this, felt this, he might not let himself do this, but instead, he slithers across the sheet to curl small and tiny against Sam, his face buried in the _saltsweatheatSamDean_ of his brother's skin. "Sam."

"Dean…" Sam sounds startled but his arms go around Dean and pull him in. "I'm here. It's okay, man. I'm right here." It should be humiliating to be cuddled against Sam's side like this, to be enclosed and held and all these other things that he'll have to lie about when the light returns and makes him remember but he can't think about that. He just…he just _needs_.

He mouths against Sam's skin, tasting sleep, tasting skin and soap, all these real things. His fingers find Sam's skin and dig in. Sam flinches, but he doesn't pull away, his breath coming faster, so Dean can hear it race through his chest. The drumbeat of his heart throbs louder, harder, and Sam's arms hold him tighter.

"Right here," Sam says again, and then his fingers are slipping under Dean's chin to tip his head back. Dean's breath goes out of him when Sam kisses him. Sam can't lie with his kisses. His falsehoods are masterful in every other way but this one; when he's angry, his lips purse up tight and his tongue is slow and reluctant; when he's sad, his mouth is crooked and forceful. This is just Sam, barely awake and still good to go.

Sam moans softly when Dean bites down on his lip, again and louder when Dean finds the curve of Sam's ass to slip between and finger him. He is soft and moist from where Dean was in him before and Dean slides in easily, making Sam buck. "Dean," he gasps, his cock heated and inflexible against Dean's naked belly.

"Shhh…" Dean whispers. "Let me, Sam. Let me?"

Sam shifts a little so the line of his cock grinds against Dean's. "Yeah," he agrees, unhesitating. "Yeah, 'course." He shifts and Dean rolls and then Sam is on his stomach, Dean's thigh nudging between his.

Dean licks the creases of Sam's neck, higher to the soft and sweet skin behind his ear. Sam whines softly and his ass writhes up into Dean. Dean bites the earlobe and Sam's foot hooks around his calf, pulling Dean in.

"I can…" Sam shimmies under him and Dean's cock slides into Sam's cleft. "I can go now, c'mon."

"Missed you," Dean mumbles against the nape of Sam's neck where Sam's hair is sweaty and curling up.

Sam's foot slides up to the back of Dean's knee, toes writhing in wordless demand. "M'here, Dean. I'm right here, now c'mon," Sam says aloud. "Want it, you fucking cocktease." Sam groans deep when the head of Dean's cock opens him. "Yeah," he says, breathless. Sam flexes and spreads his legs wider, taking Dean into him. "God, Dean…"

"Don't go," Dean says, rocking in that first deep, slow thrust. He's still afraid this will turn out to be the dream after all and that at the end of this he'll wake up in that dusty and haunted twilight alone again. Forever alone. "Don't go."

"I won't," Sam says, reaching back to dig his fingers into Dean's hip and ass. "I'm not going anywhere. Nowhere without you."

**Author's Note:**

> This [was] the convergence of a recent spate of post-apocalypse fic feeding my addiction and ephemerall asking for "slashtastic, angsty Wincest with some real love involved." Beta duties by stripped pink and exsequar; many thanks to them.


End file.
